Town Council - Special Meeting

Good evening, everyone.

I hope you all are having a lovely day. I'm going to call this meeting of the town council to order on September 15th. Town Clerk, can we begin with a roll call, please?

Council Member Rennie?

Here.

Council Member Hootis?

Here.

Council Member Badami? Here. Vice Mayor Aristo? Here. Mayor Moore?

here um perfect so uh we'll we normally begin with um verbal communications um uh but since tonight is a special meeting the public um uh should only address the council on items listed on the agenda and there's only one item listed on the agenda this evening And so public comment will be taken during the discussion on that item. So we'll hear from the staff presentation, and then we'll turn it over to the public to hear from you all. If you wish to speak, please just fill out one of the yellow cards and provide it to our town clerks. So we have one item on the agenda, which is a study session regarding the State Route 17 Corridor Congestion Relief Project. And because this is a project that is multi-jurisdictional and with multiple agencies, we have both town staff and VTA staff here to present to us this evening. And I'll turn it over to our Director of Parks and Public Works, Nicole Brougham.

Good evening, Mayor and Town Council. Thank you for having us here this evening. I'm joined by Chris Lilly, who's our project manager from the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority for this project. I also have Gary Heap with me here, the town engineer. There's also a number of representatives of the VTA and the project design team here with us this evening. We're here tonight to talk about the State Route 17 corridor congestion relief project. As I think many of you know, this project has been in the works for a number of years and VTA and Caltrans have been working diligently with town staff supporting them. TO IDENTIFY POTENTIAL MEANS FOR REDUCING CONGESTION ON HIGHWAY 17 AND TRYING TO REDUCE THE BURDEN ON LOCAL ROADS ASSOCIATED WITH BEACH TRAFFIC THAT RESULTS FROM HIGHWAY 17. I KNOW A NUMBER OF YOU OVER THE YEARS HAVE HAD A LOT OF QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS PROJECT. IT IS A COMPLEX PROJECT. IT'S A LARGE PROJECT. IT'S PROBABLY ONE OF THE LARGEST TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS, IS THE LARGEST TRANSPORTATION PROJECT THIS TOWN HAS SEEN in quite some time. So the questions and concerns are understandable for sure. So we thought now was a good time to come forward and talk more about the project with you and help foster some community understanding, understand where we are in the design process and what the next steps are for going forward. So Chris is gonna present tonight. I'm gonna turn it over to him and then we'll look forward to discussion after.

Thank you, Mayor Moore and Ms. Burnham. I appreciate that introduction. Before I go and do a short presentation, I did want to introduce some of the staff that I've brought here with me tonight from VTA and the consultant team that are preparing the engineering and environmental planning deliverables for the project. So first I'll start with Zahira Gulzada. Maybe you guys could just stand up. I may rely on these folks to answer questions later, so that's one of the reasons why they're here. Zahir Gulzada is the deputy director who manages the VTA highway program. And right next to him, we have Christine Fukasawa, who is VTA's environmental lead for the project. And then in the row behind Christine and Zahir, we have Lauren Reinking, who is the project manager for our design consultant, Jacobs Engineering Group. And next to her is Julie Peterson from Jacobs as well. She's their environmental lead. Brian Pantaleon is the project engineer from Jacobs. And Andrea Yeager also from Jacobs on the team. And then behind Andrea we have Udit Molitala. Udit is from DKS Associates and he is the traffic engineer for the project. So with that, I'm gonna go ahead and go through the presentation and then we'll field questions after we review this. So we're gonna give a quick project overview, talk about some of the features of the project, what the next steps are, and most of the evening is really about getting feedback and answering questions. So right now the existing conditions, this is an aerial photograph of the State Route 17, Los Gatos, Saratoga Road or State Route 17, State Route 9 interchange. I'll use Los Gatos, Saratoga Road and State Route 9 interchangeably, but we're really talking about the same facility. Currently the State Route 17 freeway consists of four lanes, two in each direction. WE KNOW THAT WE HAVE HIGH LEVELS OF CONGESTION IN THE PEAK TRAVEL PERIODS DURING THE WEEK AND CERTAINLY DURING THE WEEKENDS IN THE SUMMER AS IT IS RELATED TO THE BEACH TRAFFIC AS MANY TOWN RESIDENTS I'M SURE ARE CERTAINLY AWARE OF. One of the things that's kind of a side effect of the congestion on 17 is that people try to utilize the town's local streets, the parallel routes, to avoid that congestion. And then that leads to traffic degradation and congestion on those local streets. I mean, we're really talking about University Avenue, Los Gatos Boulevard. Winchester Boulevard, Santa Cruz Avenue, those north-south routes that parallel 17. The existing full cloverleaf interchange also reduces capacity on 17 because of the short weaving segments between the loop off ramps and the loop ons. So that creates a bottleneck effect which exasperates the situation as well. And then the other kind of lacking facility or lack of infrastructure is along State Route 9 or Los Gatos Saratoga Road. There are certainly insufficient facilities for active transportation modes. So bicycles and pedestrians are not well accommodated at all on the existing facility. So with that, we'll talk about kind of the project purpose. And these are the things that we're trying to accomplish with the proposed improvements. We want to reduce congestion and improve mainline traffic operations on 17. And by doing so, we envision that the amount of cut-through traffic, which would be traffic that leaves the freeway just for what is perceived to be a quicker route with no destinations in Los Gatos, or no stops in Los Gatos, we would reduce that type of traffic. We would improve the 17-9 interchange operations and then also the bicycle and pedestrian mobility and connectivity across State Route 17 and the town of Los Gatos. So right now State Route 17 does act as a significant barrier to those active transportation modes. So that's what we're trying to accomplish. So kind of the current project status using Caltrans terminology, because Caltrans is the owner operator for State Route 17 of that facility. We're in the PAED phase, which stands for Project Approval and Environmental Documentation. All of our environmental technical studies are complete based on the feedback that we got from the NLP or notice of preparation meeting where we had a public meeting here in the town. I guess it was a virtual meeting, but to gain input from local residents on what things we needed to look at when we were preparing our draft environmental document. So all of the technical studies are complete and the draft environmental document is also very close to being complete. The project cost has increased from the last time that we spoke with you. The cost has increased to about $178 million as an escalated cost. And the current schedule runs from now through 2031, excluding, PEP stands for plant establishment period. So for our replacement planting, typically we maintain that after the highway construction is complete. So that would extend beyond 2031. Talking about some of the proposed project features. At the 17-9 interchange itself, the proposed build alternative is to eliminate the full cloverleaf interchange and replace it with a spread diamond, which would involve removal of the existing overcrossing, or Caltrans actually calls it a separation structure because there are two state routes. So because it's both State Route 17 and State Route 9, the correct terminology is separation structure. THERE WOULD BE A NEW SEPARATION STRUCTURE WHICH WOULD REPLACE THE EXISTING AND WOULD ACHIEVE STANDARD VERTICAL CLEARANCE WHEREAS THE EXISTING SEPARATION STRUCTURE DOES NOT. AND IT WOULD ALSO INCLUDE A NUMBER OF ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENTS ALONG 17-9 THAT WE'LL TALK ABOUT A LITTLE BIT LATER. One of the advantages to this particular interchange is we feel like this particular configuration has the possibility of maximizing throughput on 17 during those peak congestion periods. And anything that we can do to improve operations on 17 will, in effect, have a positive effect as far as reducing that cut-through traffic. Um, the other thing that this interchange configuration does is it eliminates kind of the free right movements associated with both the diagonal and the loop ramps. Which are certainly bicycle, not friendly bicycle and pedestrian unfriendly. So this. Literally go a long ways towards improved operations for those, those active transportation facilities as well. In addition to the new interchange configuration ramp metering is proposed for both the southbound on ramp and the northbound on ramp those 2 diagonals. So, this will also be another way to actively kind of manage. you know the traffic operations and gives us the potential to or give Caltrans the potential to if they chose to during those cut through traffic periods of time right where you could actually really slow down the metering rate to potentially discourage that traffic as well so it gives you another means to potentially manage the traffic The other main improvement associated with the project which wasn't really covered on that slide is we are proposing to construct auxiliary lanes between the northbound 17-9 on-ramp from that interchange to the Lark Avenue off ramp. So instead of having two lanes for that segment between Los Gatos, Saratoga Road and Lark Avenue, you would have two general purpose lanes as well as an ox lanes that would drop at the off ramp. And then in the southbound direction, we're also proposing an ox lane. So we would eliminate where the third lane drops today, just south of Lark Avenue. and we would take that third lane to the 17-9 interchange. We are viewing this as an operational improvement. It's not necessarily a capacity increase in improvement because that third lane would not continue south past the interchange. uh... on the slide here in addition to that third line which was the first bullet uh... there will be uh... high occupancy vehicle preference lane for the northbound diagonal on ramp so uh... is you move uh... north on seventeen and ultimately a t there's uh... plans to have expressed lanes and uh... h of the lanes as you move further to the north in the corridor In the southbound direction, we are not proposing that same improvement. And that was a very conscious decision because we felt like if we had included an HOV preferential lane on the southbound direction, we might actually be encouraging people to try to bypass those queues at the meter and further exasperate the cut-through traffic situation. So it was a very intentional decision to do that. And that is a non-standard situation. Typically Caltrans would would require those ATV preferential lanes in both directions, but they were really good teammates with us or team members, and they approved that ramp metering exception. And we also talked to CHP about that as well, which was good, and we got CHP support for not including a CHP enforcement area that would have Been associated with that HLV preferential lane.

So.

I think it's, I think it's the way to go, right? If we're really trying to focus on the elimination of cut through traffic. And I think the other thing that is kind of interesting about that is the fact that really there are no plans to add HLV lanes to the South, you know, over the Santa Cruz mountains and down into Santa Cruz. So just having an HOV preferential lane for that southbound on-ramp is not really a consistent feature with other segments of the corridor further to the south. So we kind of thought about it from that perspective as well. Because in reality, the HOV preferential lane in the northbound direction is a good thing because we should be trying to encourage an HOV reducing travel demand, reducing number of trips. But just for that one particular situation, we decided to propose something different. The new interchange will have signalized intersections at the ramp termini for both the northbound and southbound off ramps. I guess for the on ramps as well. Those are new signals that don't exist today. 1 of the things that will happen because of the fact that you have 2 new signals that you didn't have before is you will see very modest increases in travel times along state route 9 because of those new signalized intersections. That was a trade-off that we consciously did to try to make City Route 9 or Los Gatos, Saratoga Road as bicycle and pedestrian friendly as we could to try to encourage mode shift for especially trips here in the town to those active transportation means. And given the proximity of the high school and just kind of where that interchange lies, we felt like that was a good decision as well. Um, and then, lastly, I guess I already kind of talked about the fact that the separation structure would be replaced at a higher profile elevation to meet the vertical clearance requirements. This is a cross-section of what that separation structure would look like on the PowerPoint. Really, the one thing that I would say is we're only maintaining, if you looked at the existing interchange, there's a single lane in both the, we'll say eastbound and westbound directions along Los Gatos, Saratoga Road. And that kind of mimics what we have today, right? There's a single lane with a short weaving lane between the loop off and the loop on ramps. So, you know, you might look at it and say, hey, there's a lot of lanes out there, but really what happens with the tight diamond or the spread diamond configuration is that you have double left turn lanes to go to the freeway. So you have to to left turn pockets to go to northbound 17 and from. from eastbound Los Gatos, Saratoga Road, and then you have two left turnpockets to go from westbound Los Gatos, Saratoga Road to southbound 17. So the number of through lanes does not change, but because of those turnpockets, it is a significantly wider structure than what we have there today. And I'll talk about the active, I've got another slide to talk about the active transportation improvements, so maybe I'll wait till I get to that slide. WHICH IS AIR. SO I WOULD SAY WHAT WE ARE PROPOSING AS PART OF THE BUILD ALTERNATIVE IS BEYOND GOLD PLATED FROM AN ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION STANDPOINT. I WOULD SAY IT'S PLATINUM PLATED. We have what are proposed class four bikeways, which are separated from the curb to curb dimension of the roadway for those two through lanes and four left turn pockets. We also have a class two bike lane, which has dual purpose. It serves as a shoulder from Caltrans perspective, but we will stripe it as a bike lane for those bicyclists that don't want to leave the curb to curb width of the road. And this is kind of consistent with the more recent thinking on active transportation design, where we are really trying to accommodate all ages and abilities of active transportation users. So the class two bike lanes are for those bicyclists that want to keep going at 30 miles an hour and don't want to slow down. And then the class four bikeways are maybe a little bit more friendly for the person going to the high school or some of the younger cyclists that don't necessarily need to be out within the curb to curb dimension of the road. And then we're also proposing, in addition to those two bicycle facilities, we're also proposing wider sidewalks than the minimum. So I think we have eight foot sidewalks in both the eastbound and westbound directions to make it friendly with separated landscape buffers on the approaches. So I think we talked about what the original purposes of the project, and one of those main four bullet points of what we're trying to accomplish is to eliminate State Route 17 as a barrier to active transportation improvements. And we feel pretty confident that this set of improvements will do that. Um, there are kind of some quantitative measures when you're looking at these facilities to say, what are you trying to accomplish? Um, and it's, it's basically called like bicycle level of stress. And so if you did that calculation for the existing facility, the bicycle level of stress would be a 4, which is the worst on the scale. And when we rerun those numbers for the proposed facilities, it would be a level of stress, a one, which is the best. So those are the things that we're trying to achieve with the project. So with that, what are the next steps? So as I mentioned, we are very, very close to finishing the draft environmental impact report, environmental assessment to comply with both CEQA and NEPA requirements for the proposed build alternative. Once we have that complete and Caltrans Concurrents will file a notice of availability to make it clear that that document is available for public review. at which point we are accepting comments which will all be responded to as part of that environmental planning process. And this is really, that will kind of denote the kickoff of the official comment period where people get a chance to weigh in and say, yes, we've reviewed the environmental document and these are concerns that we may still have if we haven't addressed some of them. So with that, that kind of wraps up my presentation. And I think it's time for feedback and questions.

Great. Thank you very much for the presentation. Very, very helpful. And so we'll do some preliminary questions right now, turn things over to the public, and then go to the council. I'll go to Councilmember Badami and then Councilmember Rennie.

Thank you for the presentation. It is very much appreciated. I'm glad we have a lot of residents here to listen in. But considering the cost, I need to know how this measurably benefits Los Gatos. I mean, our residents, they've been upset for a long time. They are landlocked on the weekends. We're severely impacted. So I'm going to ask you a couple questions. regarding some local streets, and I want to know if these were inside the traffic study area. And that would be Las Gadas Boulevard, Main Street, Winchester Boulevard, and North Santa Cruz Avenue. Were these analyzed?

Yes, all of those locations are included within the study area, and I think University Avenue as well. I don't know if that was on your list or not, but that was a key one that was included. And so when you see the, when the draft environmental document is released, you will see the study intersections and how the level of service of those intersections has changed and, you know, where it's improved. and i will say it is not necessarily um not all of the intersections will show improvement you know there will be some that will show very nominal increases in intersection delay and probably the biggest ones would be the fact that you know we've got those two intersections that didn't exist before right so you didn't have any delay in At the ramp termini that you will now have today, and that was the trade off where the active transportation benefits. And as far as the cost of the project, it is not an inexpensive project to be sure. But I would say, when you think about the benefit to the town residents. You know, certainly the active transportation components of the project, the folks that will benefit the most from that are the town residents. It's not so much of a regional improvement. It's really a local benefit for folks that live here. And I think we are still projecting a significant number of trips to come off of those parallel local streets and go back to 17 where they belong. And I think that's what the town residents will want to see.

One more question, if I may. Please. Thank you for that. And I did not include universities, so thank you for adding that on. And I just want to make sure you just didn't analyze the labels on the map. So my next question is, how much reduction is forecast? What can we expect? Vehicles per hour and percent of baseline by street, by scenario? What can we count on? Is there been any study so that we have some type of guarantee that this is going to be effective for us and make a measurable difference?

Well, I think kind of the overall philosophy on how we are viewing these improvements, I think there's really three things that we're citing to move trips back to State Route 17 that are on those local streets right now. So the first improvement is the auxiliary lanes between State Route 9 and Lark Avenue. So one of the things that is encouraging people to get off of the freeway are the queues, right? If you looked at a beach traffic weekend, certainly queues are going past State Route 85, they're going on to State Route 85, they're going past the exit to Winchester. People sitting in those queues, they see that and say, hey, I'm gonna get off on the local street, I'm gonna try to take a shortcut, I'm gonna try to save five minutes or whatever it is. Well, by having the ox lane there, one of the things that you are doing is there's basically more room to queue, too, when you have those super high peak travel demand periods. So if you can bring the back of the queue off of 85, right, off of that Winchester off-ramp, south of Lark Avenue, just by being able to queue more vehicles when you have those really bad high-demand traffic periods... that in itself will discourage people from getting off at winchester or getting off at lark and then cutting through the town because they haven't hit the congestion yet so that's one aspect of how we expect to reduce that cut through traffic the other uh... second aspect of it is the seventeen nine interchange operations themselves and you talked about some of the numbers and uh... During those beach traffic weekends, we looked at a number of sources for looking at how much traffic is actually getting through that interchange. And just for comparison, right, and this is probably true for even like the PM commute periods where the cut-through traffic is not quite as bad. You know, you see some of it. It's not like you don't see it, but it's not certainly like the beach traffic weekends. And if you looked at how many people are getting through that interchange in southbound 17, let's say, during a PM peak period, it's about 3900 vehicles and like a peak hour and. That's not awesome, but that's a respectable rate. A lot of times you'll figure about 2,000 vehicles per lane per hour is a good target for what your capacity should be. Well, during those beach traffic weekends, the number of traffic getting through that interchange is all the way down to like 3,300 vehicles per hour. So that's an extra 600 vehicles that you've got every hour that are adding into that queue because they just can't get through that interchange and points to the south. So I think what's happening is that the short weave between the loop on and the loop off plus a steady stream of vehicles entering that are trying to get back to the freeway after they've already cut through the town's streets are greatly diminishing how many vehicles can actually get through the existing State Route 17. So by changing that interchange configuration to the point where you've just got one on-ramp in both the northbound and southbound directions with what I think is the third big benefit or big improvement to help reduce cut-through traffic, which is the ramp metering and the ability to actively manage that you know, how many vehicles you're actually letting back on the freeway. Those three things, the hope would be to get us back up to like that 3,900 vehicle figure that you see when, you know, things are not quite that bad, right? More like a PM commute period type situation rather than the beach traffic type situation. There are no promises, there are no guarantees. One thing that I didn't go into traffic engineering is because traffic is never the same twice. And so you can look at it and you can say, are you gonna expect to have that situation? Is it gonna say we're never gonna have a beach traffic issue again? No, I don't think the project is promising that, but I think we are promising an improvement for sure.

Thank you, and thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. We'll go to Council Member Rennie. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the report and all the work to get it to this point. And I appreciate all the discussion and explanation you've given on the operational efficiency improvements In Los Gatos we put a lot of value on safety and we spent a lot of time talking about safety. In my mind this project is as much about safety as operational efficiency but In your verbiage, nowhere have you mentioned safety improvements, and I'll give you some of what's in my mind. For example, I've walked across that many times, and the cloverleafs have very short sight, so you can't tell if there's a car coming. And the car can't tell if somebody's trying to cross unless they happen to be on the correct side of the curve. And so you have to be pretty fleet of foot to get across quickly to make sure a car doesn't hit you. Somebody less fleet of foot, it seems like it would be pretty dangerous. Another place that is, I found, we have had accidents, I know, and actually, I believe my wife even had an accident there, where coming out of downtown, heading east on 9, you've got one lane that's going to get on and go south, and the other one goes straight through. And if you want to go north, you've got to, oh, shoot, I've got to get out of this lane and move over. And so you have people doing... rapid, you know, unpredicted moves sometimes through there and then so there's some danger in that for accidents. But then if you actually try to ride your bike across there while people are doing all of this or then get to the next part where now they're trying to get onto the northbound ramp and you've got a bike going through there with very small area, it's Pretty unsafe. I've ridden my bike through there also. After a couple times, you learn not to do that. So you talked a lot about encouraging more of the multimodal. And yes, it only takes a couple times of losing your breath trying to get through there that you find that you're not going to do it anymore. Another place that I've found is unsafe is occasionally I might be coming from Santa Cruz heading north and I decide I need to go somewhere off of Lark Avenue. I'm not going to get off at 9 like I might usually. And so I'm not used to going past 9 and I'm going highway speed. And all of a sudden with very little visual distance, a car appears on the highway in front of me from the Route 9 on ramp. So I have to. Oh crap, I got to slam on my brakes and hope the guy behind me doesn't hit me kind of thing. So that also feels like a very dangerous area. So again, I'm sort of surprised you didn't mention safety improvements. Am I overemphasizing in my mind the safety improvements here?

No, I don't think so. I think that's a very astute observation. Shame on me for not really highlighting it more. I think when I talked a little bit about the level of stress, that kind of is related to that because what you're trying to say is how are you minimizing the potential conflict points between active transportation and vehicles? And so, you know, those short weaving distances that you've got between those loop on and loop off ramps. That's really more than just a single point of conflict, right? It's a continuous point of conflict over that entire segment of of of highway or local street. So I think from an active transportation perspective with the teed up intersections, the removal of those free rights and the removal of the weaving between the loop on and loops off, those are all like stellar safety improvements for sure. And I will say that we did also do what Caltrans calls the highway safety assessment. And we are showing marked improvements in safety on the city streets. will say that that is an interesting analysis a little bit because when you do it it's an empirical based analysis and the the way that you calculate the accident projected accidents rates are based on links of segments and volumes and And so by shifting the traffic off of the city streets and back onto State Route 17, we were not seeing huge reductions in accidents on 17 itself, but we were on State Route 9 and on the local streets, just because of a function of now, hey, we're trying to get State Route 17 to carry more traffic. Right now, 17 itself, the accident rates are actually pretty close to the statewide average. So, you know, kind of maintaining that level is probably an acceptable solution. I think the safety benefits on 17 itself are going to be from kind of like the upgraded facilities, right? Because as we construct the new ox lanes, we're going to have to like replace guardrail segments, bring those up to the current latest standards, crash cushions. Some of the ancillary equipment along 17 will have some added safety benefits, but I I think you nailed like where the real kind of the heart of the safety improvements are for those active transportation modes and even for motorists as well. You know, as you're trying to look back over your left shoulder as you're getting off of the lane between the loop on and the loop off and getting back to the one through lane. Those movements are not necessarily something that we should try to, or you would design into a facility today, right? The full cloverleaf is really an antiquity. an antiquated design because of the fact that when that interchange was built, the traffic volumes are just way, way lower than what we deal with today. And so if you've got a steady stream of traffic in that one through lane, you're going to project a higher number of accidents from that situation like your wife experienced THAN A MORE MODERN INTERCHANGE CONFIGURATION LIKE THE TEED UP THAN A MORE MODERN INTERCHANGE CONFIGURATION LIKE THE TEED UP THAN A MORE MODERN INTERCHANGE CONFIGURATION LIKE THE TEED UP THAN A MORE MODERN INTERCHANGE CONFIGURATION LIKE THE TEED UP THAN A MORE MODERN INTERCHANGE CONFIGURATION LIKE THE TEED UP THAN A MORE MODERN INTERCHANGE CONFIGURATION LIKE THE TEED UP THAN A MORE MODERN INTERCHANGE CONFIGURATION LIKE THE TEED UP THAN A MORE MODERN INTERCHANGE CONFIGURATION LIKE THE TEED UP THAN A MORE MODERN INTERCHANGE CONFIGURATION LIKE THE TEED UP THAN A MORE MODERN INTERCHANGE CONFIGURATION LIKE THE TEED UP THAN A MORE MODERN INTERCHANGE CONFIG

All right, thank you. I appreciate my fellow council members bringing up the safety issues because I think about that all the time. In fact, I think most of us who have raised children and taught them to drive who live downtown, we would take our kids to Lark Avenue to teach them how to get on the freeway because the last thing you're going to do with the new driver is have them do that crisscross and that super short ramp and I would say probably at least once a month somebody on that ramp comes to a complete stop because they're not ready to merge onto the freeway and now you've got this whole problem. I also make myself walk Highway 9 at least once a month so I can see what some residents are putting up with and it's really unpleasant and as a cyclist I was at an early meeting on this project where there was the reference to the level of stress was a four And those of us who bike said, oh no, it's a five. You need to have that to another level because really going between crisscrossing cars. You did bring something up that alluded to the question I have and I'm happy to hear that studies, it sounds like studies are showing that this the auxiliary lane could help reduce the queuing that goes back to Highway 85. Because what I see, I know people talk about cars getting off 17 and getting back on, but on, I've been doing this for at least five years, on Saturdays when traffic starts to jam up, I have multiple addresses in Mountain View or Palo Alto, in almaden valley different parts of the valley and i want to see on three different mapping apps how they're being routed to the beach boardwalk and i forwarded some of those to parks and public works but what's interesting is as things start to get crowded it's not so much the cars are getting off seventeen they're not even going to seventeen they're getting off eighty five at saratoga avenue if they're coming from the north They're being directed off Saratoga, or sometimes De Anza, and then through Saratoga onto Highway 9, and then accessing 17. Because that 1785, once that starts to congest, people just do the hypotenuse. They just, they're directed that way. Similarly from the south, they're being directed by the mapping apps to get off at Union and are either taking Blossom Hill Road or Shannon when it was open or heaven help us, Kennedy, and jamming up that side of town. And so to me, I think anything that will help alleviate that congestion and delay when the 85-17 interchange starts to get congested will keep cars on the freeway. So the other problem is we have people jumping off 85-17 early before they get to 17. So was that part of the study? Because you did talk about the queue going past 85.

I don't think our study area went past Winchester in 85. So I think it went past 85 on 17, right? So we captured beyond the on and off ramps at 85 going, I guess it's what, west on 85? I guess. Right? I think Winchester was our last, the off ramps to Winchester were our last intersection, I believe. Okay. So it probably did not capture Saratoga.

Okay, but when it starts to congest as it moves up there, that's when people start jumping off from the sides.

Yeah, I mean, I think if we can, whatever we can do to bring the back of Q to the south, which really we're trying to do it through two ways, right? By getting more vehicles through the existing, well, existing 17 nine interchange, but the 17 nine interchange that we're proposing, right? If we can get that 3,300 number up, somewhere closer to 3,900 or 4,000. And then just the fact that you have the third lane there, it's more space for vehicles to queue as well, right? So both of those things really should bring that back away from that 85, 17 and do exactly what you're talking about of not necessarily encouraging people to get off much earlier than what they really should be.

Okay, great. And then the other thing that I was thinking about, I mean, I know people think about beach traffic a lot, but we have a lot of congestion in the regular daytime. And what I am sure these auxiliary lanes will do is reduce what our former Parks and Public Works director used to call turbulence. So as people were coming south on Highway 17, where 17 goes from three lanes to two, Just as you're about to get to Lark, you see brake lights ahead of you because people are hitting their brakes as they're merging and people jump off at Lark. And so I think if we can eliminate that level of turbulence, then we'll have fewer cars that are trying to go all the way downtown, jumping onto the surface streets. And I will steal myself and make myself. Keep following those brake lights, and truly after a couple hundred feet, it's free flow again most of the time. So I think that will help out with the day-to-day kind of roadway extra congestion that we have.

It's a more leisurely lane change, right? If you don't have to do it right there at that location south of Lark.

Right, and a lot of people going through Lark are getting off at 9, but when they see the brake lights, they jump off at Lark.

Well, and that's the real advantage of it, right, is for folks that are destined for Los Gatos-Suritoga Road anyway, right, they never even have to make that movement, so you've got one less weave that's going on, and everything should be smoother. And that is a significant, significant volume, and... I think, you know, if you've looked at the 17-9 interchange, most of the people coming to that interchange are either, are getting on or getting off of, or getting on from State Route 9 or getting on State Route 17, right? A much higher volume of traffic is doing that than is actually going through on La Scala-Saritoga Road.

And then finally, at the moment, I just want to thank you because I think the consideration not to have the HOV lane southbound makes so much sense. I realize that's a big exception, but for beach traffic, everybody would be jumping the queue. There's usually a lot of people in the car, and that is not a commute direction. Our morning commute is everybody coming from over the hill or in the hills this way. So I was really happy to see that exception. Thank you.

Well, I just really have to thank our partners on that one because Caltrans and CHP really helped us, you know, make that part of the preliminary design at least. So I can't take too much credit for that one. It's really, really those guys.

Yeah. I'm going to go to Council Member Hudas. I'll ask a few questions and Council Member Adami and then the public.

uh... thank you i had two areas i wanted to ask about but again i wanted to thank you for coming here with data and facts we've had many hearings uh... meetings where we have a lot of opinions and so I'm very much looking forward to reading the traffic study and understanding some of the facts around this because I think ultimately we may have to make some trade-offs and so it will be really important to do that. The first area, coming back to the safety theme, is with regard to what I call the beach gridlock situation where uh... we actually get a gridlock into the neighborhoods and so in addition to studying the main arteries has the traffic study looked at neighborhoods like almond grove glenridge ridgecrest Overlook, Alberta Way, and some of the others where you see an absolute gridlock where people are stuck in a neighborhood, people can't get out of their driveways, and it's not a convenience issue because that's also some of our highest fire danger areas. A number of those areas are within the WUI and we have to be able to get emergency vehicles in there on the days when we're having the worst beach traffic gridlock. So have those neighborhoods been studied and will we be able to see relief of gridlock in those neighborhoods with this?

Yeah, this might be one where I would maybe call one of my experts up. So maybe, Udit, you can think about this a little bit as far as recalling the study intersections that we had studied. I will say they were focused on those parallel routes, parallel north-south routes. So I do know that Alberto Way and Los Gatos-Saratoga Road was definitely within our study intersection. For the other intersections, if it required that we go off of one of those parallel north-south routes, I'm not sure if too many of those intersections would have been included, but we definitely had some additional intersections on Main Street that were not on the north-south routes directly. I mean, I guess what Los Gatos Boulevard kind of becomes Main Street, right? So depending on how you look at that. But we tried to study the intersections that would most affect the cut through traffic and make those determinations. But maybe you can remember, I don't know.

Maybe just add one comment to that in that, and I think the vice mayor hit on this a lot, that really it's about how do you get around and move when this kind of situation is occurring? And what is happening is people are getting off their route to Santa Cruz way back in Saratoga or even Cupertino. taking Highway 9 and then using these neighborhoods that I've described as an on-ramp to 17. And so, you know, Glenridge, Hernandez, Almond Grove is essentially an on-ramp when we have this gridlock situation. So that's why I'm asking about that.

I can answer that. So most of the apps that we just talked about, they look at travel time, optimal travel time based on data to assess what route might be the fastest to get you from point A to point B. So by improving the operations on 17, we are making 17 a little bit more accessible and a little bit more optimal for those routes to choose it. So, even though we studied. 17 corridor and the paddle arterials around it, we had about 19 intersections in total that we studied as part of the tour. They may not include all all the neighborhoods, but we try to. At least assess the ones that we can capture and understand how the routing will change back onto 17, but the idea remains the same. It's a cascading effect. So what really happens right now is 17 would have been the most. Accessible and the fastest travel time route for people going to the beach. But it's congested, so now they go now, the traffic looks at it and the apps direct them to Winchester and University or Los Gatos Boulevard, and that gets crowded up. And then the traffic goes to further East for the West, trying to navigate their way through local streets. The idea of improving 17 is to bring that cascading effect back onto 17. So while the intersection analysis that we have done as part of the tour may hit on those major arterials, they have about similar benefits on all the other neighborhoods. And to your point... It's also addressing some of the concern that's not directly in the study area, but at the same time, by improving the travel time, it actually brings everything back on to what would have been the most efficient and the shortest travel time through 17 going to the beach.

I had one other question, and that's about, thank you, about the widening. And so we will be adding an extra lane between Highway 9 and Lark, is that correct?

Yeah, that's right. The additional lane that would be added, the ox lane to connect the on-ramps and the off-ramps at those two interchanges, right? Lark Avenue and Los Gatos Saratoga Road. For the most part, it's a median widening to construct that additional lane. So right now there's kind of a thriving barrier with oleanders lining the median. So that would basically be built out and it would be replaced with a concrete barrier. The overall proposed cross section does actually extend a little bit beyond the outside edge of shoulder as well I think probably in like the four to five foot range to get Basically the three northbound lanes and the three southbound lanes for that segment so within that area sort of right in the middle is blossom Hill Road and that over crossing is

not to spec. It's dangerous. We had a truck run into it and get stuck. We have a big issue with getting kids across that overcrossing from the west side of town to where junior high and other elementary schools are. Blossom Hill Road overcrossing is not included in this project. Is that correct? And is it adequate? To accommodate another lane, and can that even be constructed? Given the height issue with blossom Hill road overcrossing.

Well, there are some nonstandard features associated with the proposed build alternative. and our partners at Caltrans basically did have to look at that and determine kind of what was minimally acceptable. So we are perpetuating that condition as far as the nonstandard vertical clearance at Blossom Hill Road. And I think the reason that we proposed not to improve that is because while replacing the vehicular overcrossing would have been a good improvement. And I would advocate for that, for sure. It really wasn't consistent with the purpose and need of the project. So from our perspective, that wouldn't do anything to eliminate cut-through traffic in the town. It would have no effect on that part. And the town's advancing another improvement to construct a pedestrian overcrossing at that location, which should address the shortcomings from an active transportation perspective. So we were looking at that as being a project that is a good improvement that we certainly support the town in their pursuit of that. I THINK THAT'S KIND OF WHERE WE WERE BASING IT ON NOT INCLUDING IT. SO CALTRANS HAS BASICALLY AGREED TO MAINTAINING THAT NONSTANDARD FEATURE OF THE VERTICAL CLEARANCE AND WE HAVE ALSO GOTTEN APPROVAL FOR THE SHOULDER WIDTHS THAT ARE REQUIRED TO accommodate the pedestrian over crossing that the town is pursuing. So that was built into our approvals that we are doing as part of this PAD phase process.

Yeah, thank you. We'll come back to some questions that I have about the finances for this project after we hear from the public. But I do think that in order to get this done, it's going to require some trade-offs. And I am concerned that we're not solving other issues or we're solving the other issues in a very expensive way. and perhaps we ought to do some trade-offs and incorporate the Blossom Hill Road and make that a safe crossing for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Yes, I'll go to you. I'll ask my questions, then I'll go to you. So I just wanted to share, I'm very excited about this project. I actually, when I came onto the council, I learned about this project, read about it, and was not convinced. And in the years since, I think that this is a very... YOU KNOW, IMPORTANT SOLUTION TO WHAT I HAVE HEARD FROM RESIDENTS AS PROBABLY THE NUMBER ONE COMPLAINT FOR FOLKS IN TOWN, WHICH IS TRAFFIC. AND I THINK THE CATCH 22 OF CUT THROUGH BEACH TRAFFIC IS THAT WE ALL WANT A SOLUTION, BUT NOBODY LIKES THE SOLUTIONS. AND SO I THINK WE'VE DONE A LOT OF WORK ON MAKING THIS A WORKABLE SOLUTION. I am an enthusiastic supporter of trying to get this done. The one quick anecdote I'll share that I share with people all the time when I talk about beach traffic in town is that I had a woman in my life. Her name was Rosemary Tracy, who was born and raised in Los Gatos. She passed away a couple years ago at the age of 92 or 93. And so she lived in Los Gatos for decades, nearly a century. And she gave me some newspaper clippings from the 1970 Los Gatos Town Council election. There were five candidates running for the town council at the time for three seats. And each of those five candidates cited beach traffic. traffic as the number one issue that they were going to solve should they get elected to the town council. And so people much smarter than I am have been trying to fix this for a very long time. And so I applaud VTA for partnering with us on this project as I applaud Caltrans because I think this is very important. So the couple of questions I had, the where I'm It's not entirely clear to me where the lane extension ends going towards Santa Cruz. So it starts at Lark Avenue, goes to Highway 9. Does it end right at Highway 9? How much further does it go?

Yeah, so basically if you're headed, we'll say southbound on State Route 17 in the rightmost lane, the new number three lane, we'll say, that lane would be an exit-only lane as you come to Los Gatos, Saratoga off-ramp. Okay, so right out. You would have to exit. You wouldn't have the option of continuing to the south. and in the uh in the northbound direction um technically i guess it's the the third lane would actually end uh to the ramp that goes to state route 85 because you have that braided ramp structure there in the northbound direction so technically it goes a little bit past the lark avenue off ramp but it's basically right there Okay, that's helpful. I think it's before you actually get to the over crossing, right? I think that's where that lane ultimately ends up.

Right, but that makes sense that it's a forced exit that helps with the flow, so that makes sense. So, and then the other piece of this is, you know, I am, as Vice Mayor Risto talked about, I am also a biker. I have biked across this intersection, you know, a number of times. I consider it to be the number one most dangerous intersection in the town of Los Gatos to ride a bicycle on, and it's also one of the best, you know, it's one of the most connected otherwise. It's, you know, the downtown's right there, or East Los Gatos. And so I'm excited too to see the major active transportation improvements. I think those are really excellent. So would these be no right on red turns or how would these, the turns going onto the ramps, what would those look like?

I'm not positive about the no right turn on reds. I will say that, you know, they are going to be teed up. Maybe we can, I don't know if we can bring the PowerPoint back up. Is that possible or? Maybe not so. Those intersections that the free right will certainly not. Exist anymore, right? People will be expected to come to a stop on red and there will be pedestrian push buttons and the pedestrian signal heads, which would. Offer those protected traffic signal phases for pedestrians that are crossing those intersections. And I think this is kind of. Pretty much the standard that we do today when we want to try to accommodate active transportation users of making sure that, you know, you don't have, like, the separated pork chop islands where people can basically cut the corner and, you know. I'll say too many motorists are just not paying that close of attention to those potential other users at the facility. But I'm not positive if we would be having any right turn on red restrictions. I'd have to get back to you on that.

Okay, yeah, I'm just – I guess I'm curious for just a little bit more detail on how this actually works in terms of the Class 4 bikeways and how that sort of operates along the whole route, especially when you hit the intersections. Because I completely agree with you. The point of this project – like, I can – As someone who rides bikes all the time, I can ride across Highway 9. It's fine. It's unpleasant, and I don't prefer to do it, but I can do it. The point, to your point, of those Class 4 bikeways and those widened sidewalks is to help... students and older folks and, you know, all kinds of people in our town who are maybe less comfortable on a bike be able to use this interchange. And so I very much appreciate that. Yeah. So I'm just I guess I'm curious for, you know, at some point for a little bit more detail on how those those bike lanes actually, you know, go the whole length of the improvement.

One thing I did leave out, the town has invested significantly with the new connections to the Los Gatos Creek Trail, which are awesome improvements. One of the things that this project also proposes is from the southbound ramp intersection, To the new Los Gatos Creek trail connection on the north side of state route 9 is basically to tie into that switchback so that there would be actually a class 1 path for some of those other users active transportation users from the southbound ramp intersection. to that new Los Gatos Creek Trail connection. So that's another, I think really good improvement that came at the suggestion of the VTA bike pad weight. So it was good. Great, thank you.

Council Member Budami.

Thank you. I have two questions. So I want to go back to the safety issues over at that cloverleaf at Highway 9 and 17 in Alberto. And full disclosure, I live over there on Alberto. So did this study consider population growth with our housing element and all the numbers that we have to produce? Because right now in Alberto, which is kind of a very short street, there's maybe 300 housing units. So times two, you get 600 cars. There's 200 more units pending between a vacant lot at Alberto and Highway 9 and the development of the lodge. So 200 pending units times two, there's another 400 cars. So now you've got 1,000 cars right there. So what do you anticipate from this scenario in managing traffic congestion, despite the access to the creek trails? I'm talking cars.

Yes, so when we did our traffic projections, the tools that we used for forecasting traffic volumes were basically the VTA countywide travel demand model. and so that takes into account land uses that are in each of the local agencies general plans and you know the assumed development densities that are in those plans so for plans that are for developments that are consistent with the los gatos uh general plans those gross would be factored into that i think Once we did the traffic forecasting, we did a number of other models that were used to try to project how those increased volumes would operate. And so I think for the local street intersections, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, come up if you hear something that's not right. It was a synchro SIM traffic analysis for the local street intersections and a highway capacity manual assessment for State Route 17. And those would have taken traffic volumes that were projected up to a couple analysis years. The near-term year was 2027, as far as the growth that we anticipated. And then the horizon year was 2047 that we looked at, you know, if we continue to have growth, as projected by the VTA travel demand model. Those were the volumes that we were trying to design for. I will say that when you get out to 2047 with those growth numbers, the level of service is not good. And whether we were doing this project or not, the level of service would not be good. Yeah, the VTA travel demand model was the tool that we used to try to project that traffic growth. Last question. Yeah, please.

Okay, so earlier I mentioned residents being landlocked. I didn't mean to leave out the businesses, because clearly they are suffering. But I need to make sure which metric determines whether reduced cut-through traffic has been met? Is that the VMT? Is it the local level of service and delay or absolute non-local trip counts?

I think we tried to be more direct. I guess when we came up with this design-build alternative, it wasn't, hey, you must achieve this level of redistribution of traffic. We didn't say, it has to be this to be successful. It was really more a function of, are we trending in that area? in that direction of moving trips off of those parallel local streets and back onto state route 17, which we feel like this set of improvements will do. Um, So I guess from a success standpoint, I guess it would be kind of, I don't know, it's almost like you'd have to compare it to something else. And I'm not sure what we would compare it to. But I do feel like this set of improvements is a logical set of improvements that will move us in that direction with the understanding that if we're successful in funding the project and getting it built, that You know, there are probably other improvements that you could make in the future to take it, you know, that next step. Like we were talking about the Blossom Hill Road overcrossing, or pedestrian overcrossing, right? There are other things that you could add on that this project will not preclude that could potentially, you know, improve things even further in the future.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you very much. Okay, with that, we will turn to the public. We have four speaker cards in the room thus far. If you want to speak, please bring your card forward. And just one hand raised on Zoom right now. If you'd like to speak on Zoom, please raise your hand. We'll begin with Gus Hu, who will be followed by Rob Stump.

Okay, I wanted to speak at verbal because this is a little off, not this plan, but if we just put a stop light right where the yes are, you know, where it already goes, stop that. My dad was a region here. And if you put a stoplight there, because all the Saratoga 9 is coming into that, fix that first. You don't have to touch the bridge, because that could be one lane and two lanes to turn onto the beach traffic. And just worry about the beach traffic. Don't worry about the other side. Take out these two clovers. And that way you have a stoplight and leave the other two clovers. You can do that a second phase if you need more. But what we're trying to do is stop the beach traffic. So if you can get this beach traffic moving and get the bottleneck that's basically these two clovers on the beach side, that way traffic doesn't slow down there. And it'll help... You know, because is anything, once that traffic light's on there, you're putting one traffic light that's going to go into the diamond. No, push it back to the original things and just widen, because you have more room to work with the road and build up and put a little bit more lanes and stuff like that. It's hard to explain, but... That's if we just do that that'll save us point. You know about 20 million dollars It's just just a stoplight and you do all the construction around that because everything else is all one It basically it narrows down It's all residential and we have traffic no matter what with all this all the plant all the building so if we just concentrate on Not talk about it, but just do it. Just on that, do that phase one. Do that one little area. Don't touch, leave that blank, the two circles, you know, towards the things. And then let everybody just go one lane and just zoom around and then come back and do that other one. But if you, you know, worry about maybe cutting off and trying to get more people to turn on to get on to... beach traffic right there instead of going through the downtown. Thanks.

Thank you. We'll go to Rob Stump, who will be followed by Richard Cannonin.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. My name is Rob Stump. I am a planning commissioner, but I am definitely not speaking on behalf of the planning commission tonight. I'm also a candidate for town council that has solved the beach traffic problem. Any questions? No, okay, just checking. I'm actually speaking as a resident tonight. I've been in the town of Los Gatos for fifty five years. I can remember a day when the biggest issue we ran into going over highway seventeen with vapor lock. For any of you who can remember those days of wonderful automotive engineering, I think we can all agree that weekend beach traffic and cut-through routing on our local streets is an unsustainable problem that impacts safety, as we've heard tonight, mobility, the local economy, and quality of life for our residents, maybe even up to three days a week, two and a half to three months of every summer. However, as we look at investing millions in Los Gatos public funds potentially on this project, our guiding principle must be simple. Trust but verify. The last time I checked, Los Gatos is not in Missouri, but I do believe we have any number of residents that are going to say, show me, prove it to me. particularly if money is going to be required. And by the way, I'm not down on this project at all. I just realized that residents are going to be saying, show me the data, show me the information as we've heard about that. And so tonight, my statement is more about encouragement, not criticism. So for an investment of this scale, Asked of our residents, they're gonna rightly expect that beach traffic on our town streets will be greatly improved. And again, it may be show me. But my question to this council, to VTA, is how do we know this project will actually achieve that goal? I think we've heard some, you know, I'm gonna say positive assurances tonight, but again, sort of in God we trust, all others bring data. When we review the project parameters, there are key questions that need to be directly answered. Where is the baseline measurement? Is there a specific baseline study? And of course, we've not seen the environmental review yet that measures current weekend cut through volume on local surface streets before construction, paired with a commitment to measure those exact same streets after completion. What metrics will be used? Will we use level of service? How are surface streets accounted for? We've talked about that a little bit tonight. And so that's important. To invest this and fail to reduce cut-through traffic on our streets would be an absolute failure of oversight. Before committing our town's backing and resources, this project needs to demonstrate with clear, verifiable data that widening Highway 17 will achieve its primary stated goal. keeping regional traffic on the highway and getting it off the streets of Los Gatos. Trust the engineering, but verify with metrics. Thank you. Thank you.

We'll go to Richard Cannonin, who will be followed by Randy Chen.

Hi, I'm Richard Cannonin. I've lived in Los Gatos for 45 years. So, Los Gatos cannot afford this project. My friend was a mayor for eight years of a town with a population of 15,000. I asked her if they were solvent. She said not only do they balance their budget each year, but their pension plan was fully funded. They have no unfunded liabilities. I asked how she accomplished that. She invited me to attend one of their town council meetings where I heard a response to a request for funding her project. They said it was very worthwhile. But since it was not in the town's budget, they would have to find other sources to pay for it. This is what I expect the town council, the mayor, and the staff of Los Gatos to do. When you have paid off all your unfunded liabilities, then come back and ask us, the taxpayers, to pay for other worthwhile projects. Until then, don't even spend time trying to decide if we can afford to commit 20-plus million dollars to fund our share of this highway interchange project with little to no significant benefit to the taxpayers of Los Gatos. I would, however, be in favor of spending that same amount of money to pay down our town's unfunded pension liabilities. That would save us an enormous amount over the long run and make us solvent in the long run. But after listening to your presentation, I've added another paragraph here. I would like to propose a meter charge for each person who rides a bike on the new project. Because it seems to me that we are spending tens of millions of dollars to inconvenience cars in favor of bikes. Unlike you, I've walked tens of thousands of miles on Los Gatos streets since I've lived here, and I've also sat with a clicker, and I've clicked and I've counted the number of bikes that are used in these very expensive bike lanes in comparison to the number of cars that go by. It's not even a close call. And anyway, I agree with Rob. It's dangerous there. But if you just cut the trees back so that a walker or a bicyclist could see all the way down the curvature of the on-ramp, it would greatly increase the safety of, I mean, right now. So bottom line, Los Gatos cannot afford this project. And thank you for allowing me to speak.

Thank you. Randy Chen. Randy Chen will be followed by Tony Alarcon.

Hi, Randy Chen, resident. I'll ask my question and then I'll tell you what I think about the project. My question is, along the new improved on-ramp, off-ramps, are there going to be sound walls? And I live right behind it, that's why I'm asking you. And you already did sound studies in my yard. But I just... before you answer. I think the project looks great. I think making the on-ramp, getting rid of that clover leaf is just gonna make Highway 17 flow so much better. And all the parents who have to teach their children to drive, well, thank you. But I think it looks like it will move the bottleneck down so people won't have any excuse to get off at Lark. And that will just make everything over the weekend on Saturdays much better for the businesses and the residents. So thank you very much. And if you could just answer my question about the sound wall.

Thank you. We'll take questions. If the council has questions for staff, we'll ask them at the end. Great. Thank you.

You can tell me the answer.

And we'll go to Tony Alarcon, who will be followed by Leafa Goh.

Hello, Council Consultants. Thank you for hosting us tonight. I heard a couple words that I just want to repeat for the record. I heard hope. I heard think. I heard delays on Highway 9 with the new two stop signs. I've lived here in town since starting in 1991, seen a lot of changes. I think from a political standpoint, there wouldn't be one citizen of our town, we're not a city, we're a town, That wouldn't want to stop the beach traffic from coming through. I want that as well. But as Rob Stump said, I want to verify the numbers. This is a huge ticket for us to pay. When the project started, the budget was projected to be $102 to $111 million. Our share per Measure B would be 10%. We funded initial $600,000 for $6 million phase one of the project. Today, the budget is expected to be $178 million to build this. This may very well be a runaway train. What happens if the budget goes to $250 million? We're still not solving the Blossom Hill overchange. The town would have to contribute 10% to the project. I would like the town council members to consider that we're not the cause of this traffic. San Jose is the 10th largest city in the state of California. We are 3% of their population. We have surrounding towns, Saratoga, Los Gatos, Fremont, and elsewhere, the drivers that are using waves, Google Maps, and finding the quickest way to get through town. That is one of the causes of the traffic coming through our town. But to ask the town of Los Gatos when we have unfunded liabilities, as others have mentioned, and we have other significant capital improvements, such as this very building that we're standing in, that will be forthcoming in the next decade and beyond. So I would just ask that we do not do a full commit from the town council. I think we should limit our exposure to the project, so that way if we have runaway cost, It will not be our responsibility. And I understand the need and want to support bicyclists and walking paths. And I agree with that. I walked the trail. But I also see Winchester Boulevard that we spent a lot of money on. And I don't see a lot of people using it. And so when it comes to that, It reminds me of the university campus where some bicycles ride fast, some ride slow, and some people walk. So I think it's a good concept. I just want to make sure that that doesn't overblow our budget. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you. We'll go to Lee Fagot.

GOOD EVENING. I APPRECIATE THE OPPORTUNITY TO GET COMMUNITY INPUT DURING THIS VERY VITAL CRITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN TOWN. I'M SPEAKING AS A 31-YEAR RESIDENT. I'M NOT REPRESENTING ANY GROUP. I have a history of about six years on Saturday mornings, once a month, to do cleanup at Highway 9 and 17, that interchange. In fact, I'm going to be doing it again this Saturday. And it's been interesting to watch the traffic. I keep waiting for the traffic to increase during the summer months with the off ramps. But with the cloverleaf design, the flow is continuous. Putting signal lights at that intersection, which is the proposal in front of us, would back up traffic. And even though we're adding some additional lanes, but only between Lark and Highway 9, that's just gonna back up onto that exit lane. And it's not going to reduce the impact that such a backup would have. And... What is the real basis for the claim of reduced cut-through traffic? Were the local streets like Lark, Winchester, Union, and so forth, were they really analyzed at what time of the day, what day of the week, to see what the changes are by comparison? And I know that there was a study done apparently in 2022, but again, the specifics of when that was done and specifically where would make a difference to know that. Also, my other concern is about the safety issues during the construction of that intersection. That is going to have a significant impact to motor vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians while that construction is underway on all the routes around there, not just Highway 9 and 17, but the ancillary roadways. And that, plus the fact that we still have the problem with Blossom Hill Road, and the town is considering spending millions, tens of millions of dollars for a bike and pedestrian overcrossing without remedying the height of the motor vehicle bridge on Blossom Hill Road over 17 is another issue. Combine these challenges and let's do it all as one collaborative effort. with the various government agencies. And that's the other thing is these are state highways. They're not town roads. And yet the town is being levied a charge to do this. I'm concerned. So I'm looking forward to getting more traffic study information during the real times when there is such demand. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to Jordan Moldo on Zoom.

Hi, Jordan Moldau. I'm a resident sitting next door, city of San Jose, speaking on behalf of myself. I've been following this project since it was brought to the VTA's Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee a couple of years ago. I'm just going to comment on the project itself. Certainly the residents are way more qualified than me to comment on The return on investment and how this factors into the overall set of projects that the town does or doesn't fund. But just from an active transportation and safety perspective, I do think the spread interchange does look like it'll be safer than the current project. configuration and the active transportation aspects do seem to look good to me. I would say that with the configuration with a Class 2 and a Class 4 bike lane, I feel like the no right turn on red would be absolutely necessary. Otherwise, motorists might look in one place for bicyclists and not realize that there's a second place that they need to look for bicyclists. So I think the right turn on red will be essential there. So I'm a fan of the active transportation improvements in the abstract. and the interchange reconfiguration in the abstract. The one thing that I think is not worth the monetary investment is the third lane. And from what I heard from the vice mayor and from the presenters, it sounds like the cloverleafs are the main reason for the bottlenecks and the backups. If you get rid of the cloverleafs and you have the new configuration, there doesn't seem to be evidence that the backup is going to go for the whole 1.5 to 2 miles between the two interchanges. And so while I understand that you might need a bit of an exit lane to allow for some queuing, having, you know, a queuing lane that's 1.3 miles long, from my look at Google Maps, seems extremely unnecessary and is likely going to increase the amount of driving because it's just going to induce demand from people from other cities to want to drive to Santa Cruz. And even if you can justify the southbound Ox Lane, I haven't heard any justification for the need for the northbound Ox Lane. So I think eliminating significant chunks of those lanes would be a good way to reduce cost. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. And our last speaker on Zoom is Yamamoto.

Hi, good evening, everyone. I agree with most of the people, most of the speakers. My concern is mainly when you get all those cars coming off of Highway 17, they're crossing into Los Gatos, they're going to head towards South Santa Cruz Avenue, and then we're going to have the back up there. This is not going to improve the beach traffic issue. It really isn't. Although it will make it a little bit safer for the high schoolers coming and going on their bikes and cars and stuff like that. But overall, this is not a solution that I think Los Gatos can really afford. And I believe it should be a flat, fee or flat rate that Los Gatos is paying for, not a 10% that can go skyrocketing over the next couple of years, especially with inflation right now. So please reconsider A lot of this, I haven't really taken a look at the Lark area, but I don't see that becoming safer, what I can see. I'm going to take a harder look at this, but I'm pretty sure this is not a project that's going to improve anything overall. Thank you.

Thank you. So that concludes public comment on this item. We'll go back to the council. I just want to note for the public and the council that we have less than 30 minutes left on this meeting because we do have a 7 p.m. meeting. And so we will go back to the council for questions. We'll go to Council Member Hudas.

Thank you. I have two questions. One is financial, and then the other is about uh... uh... change to highway nine let me start with a change to highway nine uh... were talking about eliminating cloverleaf and adding to traffic lights do we know that this will have an impact on our east west west east traffic, not talking about beach cut-through. And the reason I ask is that beach cut-through is a high impact, low frequency, and low predictability. Worst case, 18 hours on a weekend. unpredictable maybe that's ten percent of the week the highway nine is traffic getting to the high school getting to the businesses east west on highway nine is a regular occurrence and there are regular jams there Is a traffic study looking at the impact of adding two traffic lights where we don't have those traffic lights and the impact on that traffic flow?

Uh, yes, we, we did actually assess that in addition to. You know, the operations on state route 17, and it was interesting. I thought I forgot. Gus's last name was talking about another alternative that basically sounded very similar to a partial cloverleaf. Alternative and we, um. We actually did look at that that was 1 of the final 2 alternatives that we had studied in the traffic operations analysis and the issues with the partial cloverleaf. Were a couple of things 1 was we did we didn't think that that necessarily was. Probably the preferred solution from an active transportation perspective That was one issue with it. The other one was that as you're coming from University or Winchester when you had a partial cloverleaf where the diagonal on-ramp would be in the To southbound 17 would be on the right-hand side and and you would also have the loop on ramp to northbound 17 on the right hand side you actually had queuing so you basically had a high volume of traffic that wanted to be in the right hand lane and so then that queuing would extend back into university avenue and those intersections because everybody wanted to be over on the right hand side so

My question really was about adding two traffic lights. Right. And will the traffic study illuminate that aspect of this project? Because I'm concerned that we're making a tradeoff to improve each cut-through traffic. and potentially causing other congestion problems east-west and west-east.

Yeah, I think in most instances, the additional travel time from the traffic signals on State Route 9 is less than a minute difference. Times two. Times two.

I had another question relating to the configuration that's been proposed. And this came up, I think, somewhat in public comment. But looking at the overcrossing typical section, it looks to me like it's, I added up all the little pieces, it looks like it's about 133 feet, which is a very, very big overcrossing. uh... is there any reason to have four bike lanes Could we get by with two or one? And again, I'm not necessarily looking for a platinum-plated solution, but for a solution that helps with safety. But is there a bare-bones solution that would be less expensive? And if so, how much less expensive to eliminate a number of those bike lanes? Still keeping at least one.

Yeah, I think the challenge with that would be we kind of feel like the class two isn't really costing us anything because of the fact that the Caltrans design standards would require that we put an eight-foot shoulder there anyway. So the fact that we are striping that as a bike lane is kind of like a bonus. And platinum plated probably was not the best term. I probably regret saying that. But the... The trade-off would be is if you could only have one and you actually wanted to reduce the width because you would need that eight-foot shoulder, the thing that would have to go is the class four. And I kind of feel like the class four is the vital improvement to accommodate all ages and abilities, which is kind of the current design thinking. So it's maybe a false narrative to say that we could just, you know, let's say eliminate the class too and save money because of the fact that we're building that within for the shoulders anyway. Another thing that Caltrans did help us with on the width of the over crossing was they did approve 11 foot lanes more in line with kind of NACTO design guidance for local streets. The Caltrans standard is actually 12 feet. So to try to have a slightly narrower lane that reduces, that can contribute to driver perception of driving at a slightly reduced speed, which when you're trying to accommodate motorists as well as active transportation users, there's some benefit there. Just one last thing before you jump in, and I would say, you know, in this particular case, I don't really feel like we were trading off vehicular operations for active transportation. I mean, we're really trying to accommodate all of those modes equally and make sure that, you know, they all operate to a good level of service.

That gets me to the other question, which is about the cost. And we've been told that a 10% match will be required. Is that the case? We also had a financial consultant tell our finance commission that in order to realistically get the project done, we would need to make a 20% match. Is that the case? And then I have a follow-up to that.

I don't know. I might turn to Zaheer on this if you want to chime in as well. But I would say the actual Measure B requirement is that the 10% match does not have to be necessarily Town of Los Gatos funds. It just has to be non-Measure B. So you need to come up with another source of 10% to leverage that to get, if you got 10 cents of non-Measure B dollars, that was what allowed you to unlock the 90 cents of VTA 2016 Measure B sales tax to kind of get us to this point today. So up to this point, the funding for the project consists of basically 90% 2016 VTA Measure B sales tax, which we all pay, right? All the Santa Clara County residents pay. And then 10% Los Gatos funds. But the actual requirement is just 10% from somebody other than VTA 2016 Measure B.

Okay, so maybe the 20% wasn't correct, but as somebody who's served on the Finance Commission and has a little bit of an understanding of the town finances, we don't have $18 million or $36 million. lying around. And so I don't see us being able to do this without some kind of a tax or some kind of a revenue measure with our residents. And so that's why it's important that we understand what the numbers, whether a 10 percent match would get it done, whether bumping it up to 20 percent is what would really require it to get done. 20% or 18 or 10% of what and so we're gonna need to come back to that because I don't see us having the money available to do this project at the level and at the Complexity with which it's been proposed Councilmember any

Yeah, so I actually sat on the VTA board before and I've watched how projects get funded. I'm kind of surprised that you're planning a whole $178 million from Measure B. I would have expected a lot of this money would come from some kind of federal grants at some point. We'll have another recession and we'll have Build Back America again. kind of funds coming from the feds again and at that point they would require some kind of match which could be our measure B funds but the measure B would be at a lower amount so then our match to the measure B is a much lower number which we then could use something like some OBAG funds to cover part of it so that our number in Los Gatos doesn't have to be anywhere near 36 million or even 18 million once you do this layered financing. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, and more really astute observations in the fact that really the intent of Measure B is not to fund these projects in their entirety, right? It's really to use that money to leverage You know, those local dollars to pursue dollars at the state or federal level. And in this case, we've used local dollar. We've or the town has leveraged local dollars to get the sales tax measure local dollars. So it's kind of a domino process where you're really using the local funds to pursue those state and federal funds. And I think the numbers from your financial consultant are probably from some of the things that we were conveying to the town's team and the fact that the more... local dollars you can leverage. Those are very competitive grant programs that you're going after when you're trying to pursue state and federal dollars. And I would say on the highway side, it's an even higher bar that you're having to set. because there is definitely a predisposition to fund transit projects at this point over highway projects. And so the more local dollars you can commit, the better your chances are when you're seeking those other funding sources, whether or not they be state. SP1 FUNDS OR FEDERAL EARMARKS, FEDERAL MEGA FUNDS, GRANT FUNDS. I THINK THE GOOD EXAMPLE, YOU REFERENCED BUILDING BACK AMERICA. I THINK MAYBE THE BIGGER ONE WAS WHEN WE WERE DOING THE ARA And in that case, the big deal really at that point in time, and this would have been, you know, what, 12 years or so ago now, maybe more than that, 14 years ago now, was if you had a project that was shovel ready, you were in really good shape to go get funds for your local community, right? And these projects are really too big for a town or a city to fund on their own. And if you can commit that commitment,

don't want to say small amount because i know to the town is not a small amount a small amount of the overall funding pie though those are um those are how you basically get projects done and thank you for mentioning that because that that was the point that we used to talk about this quite a bit in los gatos is we wanted to get our project shovel ready because there has been many of those all of a sudden there's dollars available but it's you know we need to put people back to work kinds of projects so it needs to be ready now they don't want to wait for design and studies and sequin all these kinds of things so this is you know we've done this in our other projects in los gatos also where we tried to be shovel ready um so that when funds became available we actually were had a higher consideration rate because we were shovel ready. I think some of the consultants was, well, if you really want to get this done, come up with a bunch of money. Well, yeah, of course. If you want to get it done without breaking the bank, you wait a little bit longer. You get shovel ready, and you wait a little bit longer until there are more funds available for it. I see that's the way Los Gatos would end up going is we're not going to rush out and find $18 million to move this project ahead faster. We're going to get it shovel ready and wait for more dollars to be available from other sources.

Well, and I will say the dollars that have been committed to date, so the $13.2 million for Measure B and the $1.4 something from the town is pretty close to getting us through the final design phase. We're actually not, from a funding perspective, we're not that far away from getting it to a shovel-ready point with the dollars that we already have committed. The one thing that's a little bit... From a right-of-way and utility relocation perspective, those are dollars that we would still need to find. But for the most part, most of this is within the existing right-of-way. We impact Miles Avenue a little bit, and I think one other parcel with the permanent acquisition. But right-of-way needs are not... very great so to get to that point of being shovel ready you're not talking about a huge commitment where in the near term you know another ask to the town might not be that huge right to get you to the point that shovel ready it's really just the right-of-way phase that would be unfunded thank you prior to construction yeah thank you i'll go to vice mayor risto

Yeah, I'm just going to ask a quick question because the caller on Zoom, Jordan from the VTA BPAC, I think, asked about the justification for the northbound Ox Lane. And that did strike me as what is the advantage to that and how necessary is that?

Yeah, it's interesting that I think when you looked at the actual level of service improvements, the northbound benefits were actually greater than what they were in the southbound direction. So I think it's kind of a function of the fact that You know, you're coming over the Santa Cruz Mountains, and so you've kind of got more of a metered traffic consideration so that as you add that improved operational benefit of having the ox lane without having that merge. you know, I think you see a greater benefit. Whereas in the southbound direction, because you're always struggling right at capacity and you've got the downstream bottlenecks, the actual level of service benefits don't look as good in the southbound direction. I do still feel like they are the, you know, I think it's giving us a very attractive package to work to try to cut down on that cut-through traffic, right, and try to improve the throughput at that interchange.

Okay, thank you. And I think as long as we're doing the project, if we know that that auxiliary lane makes a difference, regardless of how much, may as well get it all done at once.

Yeah, the other thing about Mr. Moldau's comments were that we actually did run some scenarios where you just did the interchange without the aux lanes. And as far as actually pulling traffic off of the parallel local streets, the... the oxalane actually had a bigger effect than the interchange reconstruction. Thank you.

Thank you. And I'll just add, I'm currently an alternate on the VTA board and I see VTA helping cities and towns like ours out a lot in acquiring money. Outside of measure B, that VTA has a much larger staff than the town of Los Gatos does. And so my understanding too is that THAT VTA WOULD BE WILLING AND INTERESTED IN HELPING US APPLY FOR GRANTS AND FIND MONEY OUT THERE AS WELL. SO I THINK THE MONEY I THINK IS ESPECIALLY IF VTA IS COMMITTING TO THE 90% MATCH WITH MEASURE B, I THINK IT'S SIGNIFICANT. I JUST WANTED TO, YOU KNOW, ADD THAT I REALLY APPRECIATE VTA, YOU KNOW, PURSUING THIS PARTICULAR PROJECT WITH THE TOWN OF LOS GADOS. THE TOWN OF LOS GADOS IS A Santa Clara County in that we don't have light rail. We don't have a robust bus network. We're not gonna be dedicating car lanes to buses anytime soon probably. But something that a lot of folks don't know is that a huge mandate of VTA is that in addition to being a transit agency, you're a congestion management agency. And so I think this is very much fulfilling that mandate. And I'll just say, I hear from residents the helpful feedback on the details of this project, but I'll also say, I feel an absolute obligation to work on BEACH TRAFFIC AND TRAFFIC IN GENERAL BECAUSE IT IS THE NUMBER ONE COMPLAINT I HEAR IN TOWN AND IT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE. SO I THINK THIS PROJECT IS EXCELLENT. SO I WOULD JUST ASK THAT VTA CONSIDER COMING BACK IN A YEAR OR SOONER AS THIS PROJECT CONTINUES TO MOVE ALONG TO UPDATE US AGAIN AND KEEP US IN THE LOOP SO WE CAN BE HELPFUL AND MAKE SURE THIS PROJECT IS COMPLETED BY 2031. Perfect. Okay, then I am going because we have another meeting at 7 PM. I'm going to end this meeting now. Thank you very much to VTA and parks and public work staff for your support.

This meeting is adjourned.